Hearts Entwined
by jaded79
Summary: This is my first Spartacus fic. I love the story of Agron and Nasir, and while I would hope it have a happy ending, I fear that it won't. If you haven't seen the last episode, then this may contain spoiler-y type information. Also, it's not a happy-go-lucky tale, so be prepared...


**A/N - Hello and welcome to my first Spartacus-based fan fic. I am absolutely in love with the characters Agron and Nasir, with the love they possess for each other. And I'm heartbroken that next week may be the end of it, at least for them. Of course, nothing is set in stone yet (and I'd love to be optimistic that somehow it works out, Agron lives, and they live together in love and sexiness for the rest of their lives), but given the real events that inspire the whole Spartacus story... it doesn't seem likely to have a happy ending. So onward to my little tale... thank you for reading and I'd love to hear your thoughts in a review! **

**Disclaimer - I own nothing. Although I wouldn't mind owning the actor who plays Agron for just a night... **

* * *

It was as he slid fitfully in and out of consciousness that he felt Nasir's lips, soft and sweet, upon his own. He would have stirred… he would have wanted to stir… but they were phantoms. It was not real. It was the product of fever, of festering wounds, pus oozing from them as he awaited his fate. His fate at the hands of those fucking Romans.

It was not a bad way to find death… he'd taken more lives than they could ever strip from him. He'd bathed in the blood of their filth as he slaughtered countless many in following Crixus in battle towards Rome. Crixus's death was honorable. Agron's would be too.

He was comforted by the thought of Nasir, safe with Spartacus and the others, far from the bloodbath that had been the fall of so many of his brothers, that would at last be the fall of Agron. Nasir was untouched by this. Nasir would not know. Nasir would not feel the loss of him. Agron felt the loss of his heart with each step he'd taken since they'd parted. He seized with anger, palpable regret, at the thought of the pirate, Crastus – fucking pirate – comforting Nasir at the loss of Agron. No. No… Nasir would not be touched by this. Agron had fallen, but he'd done well in sending Nasir upon a separate path.

Agron's heart would never beat for another. It beat only for Nasir. If he lived a thousand more years, that would hold true for every last one of them. He didn't have a thousand more years. He had but moments, of this he was certain. They'd kept him alive. He didn't know why, but he knew it was not a kindness. His death would not come in the midst of battle. But still his death would come.

Nasir would live. The thought swelled inside him. Even as he prepared for whatever hell the Romans held in store… even as his side ached and scorched from the wounds he bore… even as the memory of sword through flesh cut through the remembrance of phantom lips upon his own, he knew Nasir would live. His heart would still beat, absent his chest. His heart – his Nasir – would love another, and Agron would have wished it so. He was not a self-less man, but for Nasir to live, to love, he would give up all the wine, all the blood that was his to give, all the glory in the world. The memory of Nasir's smile burned him, sizzled in his mind as he thought it.

He was aware he was being moved, hands at his arms, tugging him up unsteadily to his feet even as Agron's eyes stayed shut. He was made to kneel, the gravelly sand grating at his knees, at his shins. He gasped with the shock of the water they threw at him. It was cold. It stung him, his eyes suddenly wide, but still somehow unseeing. His sight focused not on the Romans, not on the men who would defile his body upon a cross in mere moments, but instead on a place just past them. His heart stood there, a figment of Agron's own mind, not real. Nasir lived. Nasir was far from this. He would not know. He would not suffer from this.

But Agron kept his eyes focused on the spirit before him, on the figment. The Nasir that was not Nasir tilted his head, his gaze even, his eyes shining. The lips turned up sadly, a slight smile, one borne of sadness. Agron felt no fear as his eyes stayed locked on the phantom. Agron felt the sting of the nail upon his flesh as they pounded one wrist fixed to the cross. He felt nothing as the second wrist affixed the same way. They spat at him, but he did not see.

Agron let his eyes fall closed; his head leant back against the hardness that held fast to him. He could feel the flesh of Nasir as if his lover – his heart – was there with him, covering him, shielding him from the pain of impending death. He could feel soft lips pressed against his own, the sweetness of a man more his opposite than any other, and yet somehow more his equal as well.

"Nasir…," Agron whispered with his last breath as it left him. And his heart beat no more.

* * *

He felt the pain in the hollow of his chest. It was as if he was struck, but Nasir stood alone, no one around him but in the distance. He'd been fetching water from the stream not far from where they'd made camp; the place Spartacus's people would call their own. Nasir's heart tightened inside him, the jug of water slipped from his hands. He could hear it splinter at his feet, water splashed upon his legs, but he didn't look, his eyes were unfocused, maddened. His eyelids closed and his eyes fixed into the darkness beneath.

Agron had fallen. He felt it as clear as if he'd been there as it happened. Nasir felt the shortness of breath. He heard the wind as it whispered his own name beside him. He felt the breath of his lover as it caught in throat, never to be exhaled. Agron, his Agron, the heart that beat outside his chest, the jealous man filled with rage over Castus for far too long, the petulant child-man who could not always find the words but always seemed to find the action, the lover whose hands could both hurt and heal, the arms that had held him, the lips that had elevated him… Agron was dead. All Nasir had, his heart ripped from chest, all of it went with his lover, dear fallen Agron. Nasir would live as Agron had asked, as Agron had insisted – a free man, a slave no more – but as only a shell of the man Nasir once was. His heart would forever beat only for Agron, only for the one man he had ever loved, the only man worth loving, worth losing, and worth fighting for.


End file.
